Allocation of elective choices

Allocating students’ elective choices can be a difficult puzzle to solve.

• How do you pair courses so that no student gets both of their choices at the same time?
• How many groups do we need to create for popular courses?
• How can we ensure as many students as possible get their first choices and avoid reserve choices where possible?

At Royal Schedule, we have developed a unique elective-choice workflow that helps with the preparatory work before scheduling begins.

We can help with:

1. Giving students elective allocations that measurably increase the number of students who get their first choice.
2. Distributing courses into a predetermined number of “IV blocks” to avoid clashes.
3. Creating multiple groups for popular courses based on a maximum number of students per course.

What we need is a file containing:

• Students’ elective choices (for example, an Excel file with first choice, second choice, and reserve choice). • Information about the number of blocks the elective choices should run across (a block is a scheduling slot where elective courses run in parallel). • The maximum number of students allowed per course.

A simple example of how a file can be structured:

With input data like the above, the result becomes: Fig 2. Here we can see how lessons have been divided into blocks. Within each block, all courses can run in parallel without students’ choices clashing.

You can also get the allocation for each student as well as warnings when it was not possible to solve.

Fig 3. Here you can see the allocated elective courses for the students and which block they belong to. You will also be warned if there were students who could not get their choices without clashes.